


me and my husband

by magesamell



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: (not really lmao this is the doctor we're talking about), F/M, Marriage Proposal, Pillow Talk, References to Sex, Telepathic Bond, yeah i said it!!!!!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-09
Updated: 2018-12-09
Packaged: 2019-09-14 17:31:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16917258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magesamell/pseuds/magesamell
Summary: “For most of human history,” the Doctor told her, “marriage was a transactional relationship. Solidifying kin networks, compiling financial assets, signaling political alliance. Love in marriage is a pretty recent ideological phenomena, for you, and a temporary one at that — goes in and out of style, of course, like most ideas do. This is a bit different."





	me and my husband

**Author's Note:**

> god, hello everyone. the last time I posted dw fic was nearly a literal decade ago on ffn. but we're back back back again on our bullshit and we'll love the doctor and rose until the end of the multiverse

“Rose,” he said, and the woman immediately tensed. The Doctor only ever said her name like that when he wanted to Talk. Probably about something Serious, and Important, and very likely Unpleasant and Disappointing. Rose bit down on her own exhaustion and a tugging desire to just roll over and go to sleep, emotional reconciliation be damned. But she couldn’t. She had to keep meeting him halfway, or she’d get nothing at all from him. If he wanted to Talk, it was time to listen.

Slowly she put down her book, looked down at him beside her. While Rose was sitting upright in bed, the Doctor had long since slouched down and curled up with his pillow, one arm thrown across her lap unselfconsciously. He hadn’t moved from that position in the half hour since they shagged.

“Yeah?” Rose prompted him, and the Doctor shimmied closer, tipped his head into her lap.

“I…I don’t know how to say this.”

Rose wasn’t quick enough to halt the pleased smile that flashed across her face. They had been trying some new things. As they soon discovered, there were less places to hide in a two bedroom flat than a TARDIS. Not two days after returning from Norway, they had stumbled into conversations too wide for four walls, injuries too deep, so scarred that when spoken into the open air, they stung like acid in reopened incisions.

But she had hollered her part about the instability of time lord-human metacrises, and Donna Noble, how could you do that, how could you leave her with nothing, alone in Aberdeen with only a tin dog, why would you wander off alone with no one, she had seen him _die_ , seen the sonic slip from his cold fingers.

But he wasn’t dead, he was alive and warm in her lap. Rose snuck her fingers into his hair, massaged the spot behind his ear. This is what they had agreed upon. If it was hard, say so. And they would go from there, together.

So Rose pressed her thumb into the slight recession of his temple, asked him: “What can I do to help?”

“Ah,” he breathed, and she suppressed a laugh. Maybe not the help she was aiming for, but still fun nonetheless. She kept stroking him for several moments more before the Doctor realized his conversational impotence.

“Rose,” he said firmly. “Do you remember Madame de Pompadour?”

Her fingers stilled. “Ye-es?” she said, waiting for him to explain.

But he didn’t.

“Doctor, what about her?” Rose couldn’t divert the harsh edge of her tone. Really, her annoyance at the fireplace shenanigans had been ages ago, but he really was being more daft than usual.

The Doctor waited a moment more before answering. “It’s just,” he said, “you stopped.” He knocked his head back into her hand.

Rose laughed, and his head in her lap bounced with the vibration. She resumed petting him. “You’re a cat,” she accused. “My beautiful boy.”

The Doctor snorted, offended, but she spoke over him before he could object.

“What about Madame de Pompadour?”

“Do you remember how I figured what the clockwork crew were after?”

“Her age,” Rose supplied immediately.

“No, not what, do you remember _how_ I figured?”

Rose thought. “That was — you looked into her head, yeah? With your Vulcan mind meld.”

He snorted again. “I really should have agreed to take the royalties from Gene. _Honestly,_ Vulcan. We came first, you know.”

“Oh you mean Time Lords existed before the 1960s, Earth time?” Rose snarked. “Never would have guessed.”

“You’re impossible,” he accused, his voice warm. “I’m trying to tell you something.”

That mollified her. “Right, something about your mind meld with Reinette.”

“ _No_ ,” he said, frustrated. “That was just an example. I mean — no — not an example, not at all. We didn’t. Well, you know how she was, but I never wanted.” His gaze flicked up at her. “Right?”

She was torn between laughing, but her heart clenched. He was trying so hard, daft alien git. “Sorry, Doctor. I really don’t know what you’re on about.”

“My species,” he huffed, obviously frustrated. “Telepathic.” Here curiosity sparked in Rose. He never really brought it up — likely because of the bad memories, and through general omission that particular bit of trivia about him had lost importance in her memory of him. Telepathic, sure, but not very telepathic, or else it would have come up more. “Incredibly important part of social activity,” the Doctor was saying. “Like...body language, or inflection. An entire layer that adds meaning.”

“Hold on,” she said. “You said — in Utah, you said you’d be able to feel other Time Lords, across time and space.” He inclined his head. “But you had to touch Reinette to get inside her head. Why?”

“Species thing. Time Lords can send and receive at a distance. Most humans, really, can only receive, any sending is limited by touch — of course, touch with a telepathically superior being. But it’s also, you know, not so different.” He tried to shrug his shoulders, but only ended up jostling the both of them. “Most anyone waves hello at someone they know, but you only give a hug to those you really like. Family, friends, spouses.”

He seemed disinclined to continue, and Rose knew this was her cue to pull it all together and respond. But her mind kept hitting a roadblock.

“So was it weird to go into Reinette’s mind? Like hugging a complete stranger?”

The Doctor let out a little irritated huff. “Well...yes. But you know me, I hug complete strangers pretty often anyway.”

Her lips twinged. That was true.

“Maybe hug isn’t the best metaphor,” he mumbled to himself. Louder, for her, he said: “And anyway, connections with telepathically inferior beings don’t carry quite the same cultural tone. It’s thought of a bit more utilitarianarily, you know, the universe’s policemen acquire information to keep the peace, humans can’t really appreciate the connection, anyway, so it’s not…” He tapped her knee with two fingers. “Like hugging a horse!” he exclaimed. “The horse appreciates the physical sensation, of course, but it doesn’t understand what a hug is, what a hug means by the standards of human cultural convention.”

“So...mind-melding the queen of France was like hugging a horse,” she surmised, mostly to wind him up.

“ _Maîtresse-en-titre_ of France,” he corrected. “You’re focusing too much on Madame de Pompadour. She was just an example.”

Rose wanted to yell _an example of what_ , but kept her mouth shut. He was getting frustrated, more with himself than with her, she knew, but she was determined to be there for him, to make it easier for him.

Okay, what had he said so far? Telepathy. He brought up telepathy. Important part of Time Lord social interaction. Which, wait. Oh. Oh, god.

“Anyway,” the Doctor had been saying. “I’ve never believed the bit about humans not appreciating it. I mean, sure, you all don’t have quite the same receptors, but humans are naturally empathetic, have incredibly complex minutiae of social signifiers, of course you would understand the importance and the intimacy of it, and understanding is basically the same as feeling it, don’t you agree?”

“Do you still feel it?” Rose asked, voice low. “Or...not feel it. Does it still feel like there’s no one?”

The Doctor went very still, and Rose knew she hit upon something. She couldn’t quite gauge the character of his silence from the curve of his cheek, but before she could fret further he spoke. “Yes,” he said. “It’s...a bit muted, I suppose, but I still have the principle telepathic biological mechanisms.”

“Oh,” Rose said. “I’m sorry.”

“I,” he said, “thank you. But that’s not — not quite where I was going with this.”

“Oh you were going somewhere?”

“Yes,” the Doctor murmured. “You’re very distracting. Ask _so_ many questions.” He reached up and circled his fingers around the wrist connected to the hand in his hair. “It’s wonderful,” he told her, lifting his head to smile at her. Immediately, an answering grin chimed across her own face in response.

And it clicked.

“You wanna try,” Rose blurted. The words came fast, excited. “With me, you wanna mind meld with me?”

His fingers tightened around her wrist. “It’s not mind melding. And it’s a bit more complicated than that.” The Doctor sighed, and pushed himself off the bed so he sat properly beside her.

“More complicated than a telepathic hug?” Rose stroked his arm, and he turned even closer, his shoulder pressing solidly against her own, like he was magnetized. Rose turned too, mirrored him until their chests nearly touched.

“Yes,” the Doctor answered her. “Pretty standard cultural mores — well, standard for humans, and human-like cultures. Which, blimey, if any of them were around to hear me say that — but anyway, levels of intimacy, associated with touching, but this time the connection is telepathic.”

She looked at him. He looked at her.

“Like a mind fuck?” Rose guessed, and the Doctor went red.

“Everything is about sex with you lot,” he sputtered, and Rose grinned at how flustered he was even as she smacked his arm.

“Hey! I’m trying.”

“Yeah, I am too,” he protested. “ _Blimey_.” Rose rubbed the spot she smacked.

“It’s not...a one time...” the Doctor gestured, and finding that mode of communication perhaps even more ineffective, reluctantly continued: “ _mind-meld_. It’s a bond — a permanent bond. So, with Time Lords, you have the pretty standard sending and receiving, but with humans — at least what I’ve read, you know, not exactly polite conversation, pretty heavily stigmatized but if you know the right people, go to the right archives and right night clubs — well, anyway, I’ve heard with humans it’d be more like the TARDIS. A presence you only notice if you focused on it. Of course, all of that changes when you add physical touch in the mix. No ignoring that. The bond attunes the nerve receptors to stimulation from the designated partner, and not just the telepathic ones in your noggin.”

“When did you research this?” Rose interrupted. “Before the war? Were you...I mean did you have someone…?” Unbidden, she thought of Sarah Jane.

“Oh, no! I mean, yes. You couldn’t find the clubs now, but I never — ah, applied the research. I was curious, you know me, into the rock and roll of it.” He grinned toothily at her. “Teenage rebellion, you know?”

Rose laughed. “Rock and roll?”

“Absolutely,” he confirmed. “Now will you let me finish explaining?” The Doctor played it off like a mock scold, but he couldn’t hide the latent anxiety from her. It was coming off him in waves. He wanted to get through this, as fast as possible. As possible as he could go, anyway, given the undoubted Seriousness and Importance of it. Rose gestured accordingly. _Go on_.

“So! Where was I?”

“Nerve receptors,” she supplied, and watched him tinge a little pinker.

“Nerve receptors,” the Doctor repeated. “Yes,” he said, and his gaze flicked over her quickly in a fast once-over. God, he was adorable. Rose almost threw listening in the bin, almost let herself lean over and shut him up with a snog. _Yes_ , she wanted to say.  _Yes, I’ve heard enough. Just do it_.

But they had stopped not one, but two coups of alien democracies which had been triggered by a misreading of terms and conditions, and so Rose knew she should sit with all of it before making her decision. Even so, she couldn’t quite think of what he could spring on her that she wouldn’t already trust him with.

“Doctor?” Rose prompted.

“Right! All about sex, you humans,” he pontificated, and she knew he did it on purpose, now. Insufferable tease. “Anyways, that’s the basic gist of it. Away from each other, you’d feel a presence. But during, ah, intimacy, it’s much more. _Mind-meldy_. Emotions, memories. Not thoughts, per se, because who really thinks in words and sentences?” His gaze bounced all over the bedroom, landing with her own for only an instant before he diverted it elsewhere. But when he looked at her, his eyes were dark. “Well, some species on the galactic edge of Rancor Five who evolved a different memory retrieval structure, but not us. So, no thoughts, more like impressions with intent. Of course, things always slip through that you won’t intend, but that’s part of the appeal, yeah?” Here he met her gaze steadily. Waiting for confirmation for a question he hadn’t exactly asked.

“Appeal?” Rose whispered, and again his dark gaze jumped away, like he was afraid of her noticing something.

“Well. Like any connection, it’s about trust.” He breathed heavily, and Rose felt the warmth of the exhale on her face. “The permanence of it the bond carries certain cultural overtones, naturally. Trust, and acceptance, and well, commitment.”

Spouses. He said spouses, before.

“Are you asking me to get Time Lord married to you?”

The Doctor opened and closed his mouth several times. “I was trying to avoid that particular metaphor, you see, with your cultural context. It’s not — it would be a bit Catholic, you’re not supposed to ah, get divorced. There is, mind you, that same connotation of ownership, not so patriarchal, we’d belong to each other.” The shock of him _finally_ personalizing this ridiculous conversation made her gasp, but before she could react properly he barreled on.

“Not that —“ here his eyes widened, panicked, distressed. “You could leave, if you wanted to. You don’t have to stay with — I mean, you wouldn’t be able to sever the connection, but if you — if you stopped. If you wanted to be— elsewhere, you could, that would be. Anyway, you wouldn’t feel it unless you think of it. For humans, it’d be nothing.”

He thought she would _leave_ him? Rose opened her mouth, but the Doctor was already moving on.

“For most of human history,” he intoned, “marriage was a transactional relationship. Solidifying kin networks, compiling financial assets, signaling political alliance. Love in marriage is a pretty recent ideological phenomena, for you, and a temporary one at that — goes in and out of style, of course, like most ideas do.” His fingers still wound around her wrist, and he caressed the curve of the joint. “This is a bit different, with the added biological component. It’s about becoming more than yourself. It’s about being with someone, forever...changing with them. Literally, as often the case, with regeneration.” His thumb pressed on her pulse point. “It’s the ultimate promise a Gallifreyan could make to another.”

He said it quietly, and he moved his thumb, began stroking the back of her hand. Rose itched to reciprocate, to entwine their fingers together. And she shook her head. “You just assume humans don’t do that.” The Doctor raised his head sharply to look at her. Now she was the one to look away.

Rose swallowed.“Human marriage has that bit, too. Like — like my mum and Pete, yeah? Sure, they’re not the most, I dunno, _peaceful_ of couples, but they’ve stuck with each other through the years, through the different versions, different bodies. You should have seen them that first year. Up and down, but always together.”

Rose glanced back, and he was still staring. “Mind you,” she said. “I went to this wedding once, yeah, where the preacher went on and on about the couple becoming _one flesh_.” She scrunched her nose. “And how the mixing of their flesh would create an everlasting bond. I thought it was a bit creepy, like, only an outer space villain of the day would prattle on about human flesh that much.” Her other hand, the one he wasn’t holding, the one she pressed against her breastbone, twinged. She unclenched her fist.

“Still, I can’t judge the idea of it. Changing for someone you love.” Her throat felt thick, heavy. She swallowed again. “You know, I am the one that absorbed the time vortex once just so I could give the bloke I fancied a lift home. So.” Rose picked off a piece of lint off his sleeve. “My point is, I think humans understand a bit about dedication, even if it’s all messed up in time travelling alien stuff.” She met his gaze. “Some, maybe more than others. I bet.”

“Well,” the Doctor breathed. “Time Lord arrogance.”

His face had become impossibly closer to hers. Hooded eyes and brown freckles. Rose pinched his cheek. Yelping, the Doctor slapped a hand to his face, his mouth hanging open from the unexpected betrayal.

“That’s for implying that I’d ever leave you, git.”

And finally Rose covered his hand with hers and shimmied closer, peered at him, smirk twitching.

“What else should I know,” she asked, pressing her lips lightly to the top of his cheekbone. “Before I say yes?”

“You...want to?” His voice was low, gravelly.

“Yes,” Rose said, kissing his other cheek.

“You’d want to feel with me? Be with me?”

“Yes,” she told him.

“It’s...it’ll change you, Rose. You couldn’t get rid of it. Even if—"

“Shut up,” she said, capturing his lips. “I already told you, that’s never gonna happen. I want to be close to you.” Now she kissed the corner of his mouth. “And s’like I said. I already changed, once, for you.”

He shook his head. “I changed you back. I couldn’t change this.”

“Don’t mind,” she breathed, her lips trailing his jaw.

“You don’t?”

“Nope,” she said, and pressed a chaste peck to his lips before leaning back into the pillows. “How’s it go, then?”

The Doctor looked at her for a half moment. “Well,” he said. “The bond is usually initiated during sexual intercourse.”

Rose bit down on her laugh. Through all of that, impersonal description and talking around it and refusing to ask her, officially, and _do you remember that woman I snogged_ and he just went and said the words ‘sexual intercourse.’

“Right,” she said. “Really roundabout way of asking for round two, you know.” She smiled at him, her tongue tucked between her teeth.

He chuckled, raised his fingers to her face, trailed his fingertips across her cheekbone. “Again, bit more involved than that. It’s...a longer process. Requires multiple events, points of initiation, so to speak.”

Mirth tugged at her face. “We’d better get started, then, huh?”

The Doctor stared at her with open affection. The way he did when he was well and truly pleased. His look made her feel warm, nearly spurred her to grab and tug him down on top of her, but then he shook his head. “Nah,” he said. “Not tonight. You’re knackered.”

Rose frowned. Was he backing off? “Well, now I’m not,” she protested.

“No, you are. You’ve been awake for eighteen hours,” he informed her helpfully. The Doctor twisted, clicked off his bedside lamp.    

She shook her head against the dim. “No, I was reading before,” she said, trying not to sound excessively petulant. “You’re the one that was all cuddled up and dozing.”

“You always read to fall asleep,” he dismissed, sliding back down below the covers with the confidence of someone made certain by the undeniable familiarity of routine.

God, he was irritating. She was resolutely ignoring that the severity of her reaction was likely aggravated by her exhaustion. It was true that, in the beginning, she wanted to avoid this conversation in favor of a kip. But he couldn’t just talk about nerve receptors and multiple points of initiation and spouses and belonging and ultimate promises and expect her to just...go to bed.

It worried her, how quick the conversation ended. They’d gotten better at this— didn’t have so many clipped off conversations, avoided the worst of the side-stepping and clunky changes of topic. But he couldn’t just ask her to marry him, Gallifreyan style, and then roll over like it meant nothing.

“You’re not...you don’t regret asking?” Rose asked his back. Maybe she’d been too blithe. Maybe she offended him.

His hand shout out blindly behind him. He took her hand, and followed, rolling suddenly into her personal space.

“Now don’t be daft, Rose Tyler.” The Doctor said softly. “If you recalled, I never asked you, officially. I just think...you should have some time to think about it. Sleep on it. Before I ask you, officially.”

She contemplated the shadow cast by his nose. Slowly began to understand. “So you’re gonna ask me, then, officially?”

“Yes.”

“Properly?”

“Yes.”

Rose could see the warm humor in his eyes.

“Are you planning something?” she asked him, accusingly, delightedly. “That’s domestic,” she informed him.

“Have a little faith,” the Doctor argued. “Maybe I just want to ask twice.”

She slid down a little, peered at him. “Hmm,” she said.

“Historically, that’s produced the optimal response.”

Her hum devolved into snickers. “You’re ridiculous.”

“Just keep your eyes peeled, Lewis.”

“For dramatic declarations of ever-lasting love? Ones that don’t include reference to other women you’ve snogged?”

She watched him open and close his mouth. “Oh,” he said.

Rose laughed, full bodied, then, tugging on his hand until he was pressed against her, shaking with her laughter. And she could feel the curve of his smile on her bare shoulder.

“God, I love you,” she told him, and the Doctor clutched her closer, and she never wanted it to end.

**Author's Note:**

> say howdy on [tumblr](http://marinxttes.tumblr.com)


End file.
